


Restless

by sheskindahoran



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - After College/University, Alternate Universe - College/University, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Falling In Love, Hurt Peter Parker, Irondad, Light Angst, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, PeterMJ - Freeform, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Endgame, Spideychelle, Spideychelle Week 2019, post college AU, push my luck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:13:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22329901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheskindahoran/pseuds/sheskindahoran
Summary: Several months after graduating school and several years after saying goodbye to Mr. Stark, Peter's hit a roadblock. Every day feels like a fight, and New York breathes heavily down his back.But on a Thursday night in December, when it's raining too hard and home is too far, he feels like he's beginning again. Michelle won't let him go to waste.
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 15
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> some light angst and some emotional hurt/comfort. might combine this with a few other ideas and make it into a longer fic.

Peter pulls on the tie harder, trying to simultaneously free his neck and rid himself of the suffocating workweek exhaustion he’s getting used to feeling. Rain runs down into his eyes and he tries to blink it away. The weather station this morning hadn’t made any mention of storms today.

It’s Thursday. The bar is closer than home. And yeah, there’s not a lot of money being thrown around in Peter’s life at the moment, but he’s got a few bills in his pocket—enough to feel a little less lonely, enough for a slightly better night. 

His skin prickles in the cold as he crosses the street, heading east.

There’s a drumming of water onto the lid of a nearby dumpster, steady and securing and offsetting the occasional spray of a puddle as a set of tires rolls through it. Peter keeps his head down and moves along.

It’s a little past seven when he pulls open the door to Jenny’s and ducks inside, shrugging off the drenched winter coat. It looks lonely on the rack.

“Hey, Peter,” the bartender says as he takes a seat. She pulls a glass out from under the counter.

He rubs at his eyes and returns a smile. “Hey, Essie. How’s your week been?”

“Not too bad,” she responds, pushing the Scotch towards him. He knows he can’t get drunk. That’s not the point.

“Glad to hear,” he says, offering a soft smile before looking away. The chatter in the room is light and the lights are dim. He recognizes a couple of regulars in a booth in the corner, but the others are only strangers.

When Essie returns to his end of the bar, she points towards one of the few TVs above—an offer to let him choose what he’d like to watch. He shrugs and takes a sip from his glass instead. She heads to the back room.

Peter pulls in a heavy breath. These last few months have aged him more than he’d like to admit. Fresh out of college, a degree in Chemical Engineering from one of the world’s top institutes, a superhero side gig, a family upstate and Aunt May in Queens—he should be at the top of his game. But he’s not at Stark Industries—not right now, not for a bit. Couldn’t handle it alone yet. Couldn’t take the name for himself.

He’s finding that guilt ferments.

Peter pushes himself from the counter. This is a slippery slope, he knows—thinking at all these days is slippery—and he isn’t one for killing a vibe. The other people are having fun. It’s almost the weekend.

His phone buzzes with a notification about a post from Ned—Ned, who has recently started at an entry-level job in the State Department down in D.C. He’s on his way to big, secret agent-type things—a dream he’d never thought he’d have, but becoming Peter’s “guy in the chair” in high school had had a way of changing things.

Peter misses having him around. These days, Karen is his best companion. Some weekends, however, they link up over FaceTime while Peter’s in the suit and pretend they’re eleventh graders all over again. Ned draws on his new hacking abilities to help Peter win his fights, and Peter gets to hear about Ned’s blossoming love life. It’s good.

His thumbs move to send Ned a text, something like _hope you’re not too busy tracking terrorists to send me that photo of Katrina like you promised_ , but the teeth-chattering gust of wind that sweeps in through the doorway pulls him away from his phone. The new patron shakes off her umbrella— _prepared_ —and sends half a glance towards Peter before taking a seat a few stools down.

Peter slides the phone back in his still-wet pocket and pretends like he’s more in the moment than he is. On his right, the woman orders a martini. She pulls out a sketchbook a minute or so later, and without looking, he feels her eyes watching him.

He gives a couple minutes, but then turns cautiously towards her. She doesn’t avert her gaze. Peter definitely doesn’t expect to hold eye contact with her, but there she is, studying him like he’s someone worth studying.

“Sorry-“ he starts, coughing when he realizes his voice is pitched strangely from not being used in a while, “sorry, can I help you?”

“No, you’re good,” she responds, making some more marks on a page he can’t see. “I just like to draw people in crisis.” The woman picks up the book and juts it towards him proudly, her pointer finger leading his eyes to a sketch of…himself? Yeah. That’s him.

“Oh,” he says after a few seconds, not sure how to respond. “Didn’t think anyone could tell.”

“Your body reads pretty easily.” Peter’s eyebrows raise a little bit, and she fumbles for a moment. “Just, like, your face is easy to read. Not that anyone’s watching.”

“You are, though.”

“Am I?”

Peter doesn’t know what to say. He feels his body closing in on itself, so he turns back to study the labels of the liquor bottles on the shelf on the wall.

There’s a pause. “I’m Michelle,” he hears her say. When he glances back, he sees her notebook closed, scooched a little closer to him than she is.

“Peter.”

“You’re awfully wet, Peter.”

His uneasiness breaks a little. “Yeah—I, uh, didn’t know it was supposed to rain today. I’ve been at work for a while. And the cabs are getting too expensive. I saw you brought an umbrella, though, so, good preparedness on your part.”

“Oh, now who’s watching?” Michelle says, turning the corner of her lips up.

A smile breaks through the cloud hanging over Peter’s head. He finds himself leaning towards this girl, this _woman_ , desperate for some sort of approval from her in the form of a full, eye-brightening smile—something he doesn’t think she gives out easily.

He tells her about people he’s met on patrol, without, of course, disclosing that he was ever “on patrol,” and she tells him about her favorite courses in college and her overworked coworkers at the unnamed newspaper she’s employed at.

Later, when she comes back from the restroom, she takes the seat next to his. Michelle says more to Peter in one night than she’s spoken since she graduated school. Peter remembers why he loves New York.

At two, when the bar closes and he remembers he has to be at work in the morning, he offers to walk Michelle home. She reminds him that she is fully capable of fighting off _anyone_ who dared to mess with her, but lets him anyways. Michelle holds the umbrella for the both of them.

As she unlocks the door into her building, Peter shields them both from the storm. She steps inside and turns around, watching his body tense against the iciness of the rain for a moment before deciding she can be a little bit bold tonight. Maybe it’s the martini(s), or the fact that she knows Peter isn’t even tipsy, or maybe it’s because she doesn’t know if she’ll work up the confidence again to say these things and her roommate, Liz, is in Singapore for another week, but she opens her mouth to invite Peter to come dry off and maybe call him an Uber (later)—and then Peter beats her to the punch.

“How about I bring your umbrella back next time?” he says, switching from one foot to the other occasionally. “How’s tomorrow? I think the weather may be clear by then.”

“Okay,” she says. She wants to tell him that he can just dry his clothes in her machine, sleep on her couch, and not leave tonight at all, but the moment is fading. Next time it rains, she will. Next time.

He grins, leaning to the side, pulling a slip of paper and a pen from his pocket, and then writing something quickly before pushing it into her hands. “It was good meeting you, Michelle.” She nods in response, and then he backs up into the rain. A sudden flash of lightning turns the shower into a thunderstorm and he hesitates to walk on, but before Michelle can call him back inside, he folds in on himself and hurries off, umbrella doing nothing to keep him dry.

She’s not good at asking for things like this.

But next time, she won’t have to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Michelle meet again--a warm entanglement

The next morning, when Peter wakes up for work, he finds his feet don’t feel so heavy. He’s actually sort of looking forward to the day, for the first time in a while. The long sideways stare at a photo of Mr. Stark and Peter on the former’s birthday doesn’t push him back to bed for an extra ten minutes the way it often does. For the first time in a long while, he has time for breakfast.

He wipes down the counter, refolds the couch blanket, and crosses out the day on his famous physicists-themed calendar. These rituals help him reset, help remind him where he is, help him see that life goes on. His responsibilities aren’t over, despite how much he often both resents and appreciates that fact.

Nowadays, he tends to walk to work instead of taking the subway. It’s not that he doesn’t want to interact with his fellow New Yorkers—in fact, that’s why he hesitated to stop riding it—but it’s calming, and he can often either catch May on the way home from the night shift or Pepper and Morgan on the way to school. Walking is—it’s grounding, to the say the least.

He enters the lobby of the research facility at around ten of 9 and, after logging into the company servers, gets to work on continuing his research paper. His advisor wants it before noon today.

Beyond taking sips of an herbal tea from the breakroom and hammering out the details of his research process (as well as further implications of his findings), Peter doesn’t move for nearly three hours. He cleans up the citations and forwards it to his advisor for reviewing just as the clock turns 12:01. Sometimes, tunnel vision is nice.

In a sudden, desperate need for a break, he grabs his keys and heads back to the lobby, hoping the weather outside is good enough to sit in the benches outside the building. A few of the graduate research interns he’s come to know are sitting around a table in the paved courtyard, chatting in-between bites of sandwiches. They wave him over.

“How are you guys?” Peter asks as he sits down, sipping out of a water bottle and trying to blink the weariness out of his own eyes.

“Ah, y’know,” one of the young women responds, pushing back a strand of her black hair, “school is hard. And we keep having to recalibrate our force sensor, which has been delaying our work. I wish this place would just get some new ones. These things are older than me.”

Peter breathes out a soft smile and nods in agreement. “Yeah, I don’t envy you.” They talk for a little about the balance between work and school and a social life, which Peter doesn’t feel qualified enough to speak on, but before long he’s riding up the elevator to start the preparation for a new contract.

He decides to head out a few hours later, feeling productive. As he turns the corner to start heading home, however, he nearly knocks over a deliveryman unloading a pallet of strawberries—thanks spider sense—and remembers the whole reason he felt empowered to wake up this morning.

Michelle. Last night, they’d found themselves talking about themselves as children, and notably how Michelle had traveled to some strawberry-picking fields down south as a summer tradition. He liked to imagine her like that—wild hair whipping around with the breeze, cheeks colored by the sun, hands full of the earth and a warmness in her skin.

He wanted to see her again.

His hands moved faster than his brain; within moments, her voice rang through the speaker.

“Hey,” he said into the receiver, “it’s Peter, from yesterday. I don’t know if you’re more of a texting type of person, but…anyways. I’m heading home now; gonna grab your umbrella. Is there someplace you’d like me to meet you?”

“Yeah, I’ll uh—I’ll be in my place by then. If you remember where it is. I can send the address.”

“That sounds good. I’ll see you soon?”

“Okay. Bye, Peter,” Michelle says quickly before hanging up. For a moment, Peter worries that she’s uncomfortable, but decides against it. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be sending him her address.

Ah. He’s gonna see her again.

* * *

When he gets home, he takes a quick shower and changes into fresh clothes. Is this a cologne moment? Or would she think that’s gross and too hypermasculine? Should he ask Aunt May? Shouldn’t he know for himself?

He ends up forgetting to anyways, but he does send Michelle a text once he’s halfway there to let her know he’s on his way.

_Ok, cool. I’ll just be in the lobby._

Oh. Shoot. He doesn’t want her waiting on him.

Unable to swing his way there, he finds himself breaking into a fast jog—just slow enough to avoid alarming anyone. It’s a nice evening. He doesn’t sweat, either.

When he rumbles past the front doors of her building, he finds her on a green cotton couch, picking at her cuticles.

“Oh, hi,” she says in surprise, cracking a reserved smile and sitting up. “You got here fast.”

“Didn’t want to keep you waiting,” he responds honestly. He wonders if he’s imagining it, but her smile seems to grow a little wider. Peter’s heart flutters.

A moment passes between the two of them in silence, but then Michelle scoots over. “Did you wanna sit?” He nods, hopefully not too eagerly, and plops down, resting his back against the sofa’s arm and pulling up his leg so that they can face each other.

“How was work?” he asks, not wanting to be invasive. He’s found that she really appreciates privacy, but he still wants to know more about her. There’s a delicate line, Peter supposes.

She shrugs. “Normal, I guess. I wish I believed in it more. I think I’m going to start searching elsewhere.”

“Oh?”

“I just, I don’t know. I need the people around me to be passionate about what they do. This environment is just not that. And no one seems to want it to change.”

He fears for a moment that she knows too much about his own situation—that he’s not entirely in love with the development company he’s currently involved with—but then again, there’s no way she knows just how involved he is—was?—with Tony Stark. Instead, he twists his face up to show her he hears her and can empathize with her dilemma.

“Are you hungry?” he asks, recognizing he hasn’t anything but tea since breakfast. Peter pushes down on his stomach, hoping to hide any gargles.

She nods. “Where were you gonna go?”

“I kind of want falafel. Does that sound okay with you? Would you want to come with me?”

Michelle stands up abruptly and reaches her hand out to help him up. “Yeah, let’s go. I know a place nearby.” He smiles wide and flies onto his feet, springing up onto his toes. They step outside into the orange glow of a sunset—an entirely different atmosphere than they’d met each other in—and when he looks over at Michelle, all he can see is the way the flyaways of her hair radiate and reflect color. He can’t believe she’s here with him.

“What did you do today?” she asks, taking half a sideways glance at him.

“I finished the paper on my research,” he says, hiding a yawn. “Well, I sent it to my advisor. The publication deadline is on Tuesday, so I’ll probably have some more revisions to do. I’m much better at the research and the thinking parts than I am about actually putting it on paper. Need better writing genes.” Peter laughs a little to feign indifference, pushing his hand up into his other armpit.

“I can help,” she says, pushing a fraction of her hair behind her ear. “I mean, if you’d like. You wouldn’t have to credit me or anything—I just, I’d like to help.”

He’s a little bit shocked; from what he’s gathered, she isn’t the type of person to trust easily. He doesn’t get the feeling that she’s okay giving up time she could be using for projects she’s actually invested in and passionate about, but here they are.

“Yeah, I, uh, I think that’d be great. That’d—that’d be cool.”

He’s a little bit flushed and doesn’t even _remember_ the last time that happened. Michelle smiles by pulling her lips into her face and barely pushing up her cheeks. When she moves to push some flyaways behind her ear, they both bump shoulders. Peter’s heart jumps.

_Down, boy_ , he thinks. A breeze sweeps crumpled pages of newspaper out of their path.

The restaurant Michelle likes isn’t far. At a table against the window, they recount favorite summers and unhealthy college habits and places they’ve always wanted to see. Peter walks her through just a bit of his home life—the unclassified parts—and Michelle admits she’s never been able to hold on to people for very long.

He shares half of his baklava with her.

The sun feels warmer.

The wisps of their hair glow golden.

And there’s a movie she wants to show him, she says—that’s what they’re talking about now, falafel long gone. It’s UK-set, and about a Pakistani man who inherits a dilapidated launderette from his uncle, financing it with stolen money and working alongside his new boyfriend.

He doesn’t totally care about the movie itself, if he’s being honest, but he likes to hear her talk.

In turn, he wants to show her a movie, too, some sort of epic that spans multiple centuries. Peter says that it does a good job of illustrating how the actions of a few can ripple widely, inspiring a revolution, and that humans have more agency than they think; he thinks she’ll like it.

He throws away their trash and they wander out, heading down the street towards nowhere.

Michelle says that if you don’t know where you’re going, any road can take you there.

Yeah, Peter likes to hear her talk.

He lets her take the lead, walking just a half step behind when they approach intersections so she can decide where they’ll turn. They tend to brush shoulders this way, too.

Peter doesn’t know the last time he breathed freely like this. It’s just—it’s so _easy_ around her. He wants to give in to her every whim, wants to cheer on the things she enjoys, wants to see her when she’s focused or pissed or satisfied. He can feel how she hides inside herself, but there’s not a doubt in his mind that she is aflame.

Somehow, they get onto a history track, discussing the things they remember from high school about New York in the Gilded Age. It’s hard to imagine this part of the city as an industrial haven, with factories on every corner and soot-faced kids running alone up and down the streets. Michelle fascinates over the parallels of the tycoons of the early 1900s and the big business corporations now ( _she should have a podcast_ , Peter thinks).

Under Michelle’s guidance, they arrive back in her lobby. The sun’s been down for a while now, and Peter supposes he should probably dismiss himself before she does.

They’re halfway to the elevators when Michelle turns around, however, and says, her eyes open and vulnerable, “We could watch that movie you mentioned, if you want. I don’t work on Saturdays.” Her tongue is pressing against her bottom teeth, pushing her jaw out.

Peter’s skin pricks with anticipation. “Yeah,” he breathes, “yeah, I’d like that.”

She tugs him into the elevator and pushes the button to her floor. There’s a mirror on the back wall of the lift—a nicked-up, gold frame antique that Peter’s found himself surveying. Michelle follows his eyes. She thinks he’s about to make some kind of annoyingly profound comment, given that his expression matches that of the artsy college dorks she finds swarming in the museums Liz likes, but then he’s throwing up a peace sign and sticking his tongue out at himself and the elevator doors are opening and _he’s_ pulling _her_ out.

Her breath catches on a laugh and she stumbles to match his energy. He’s so much warmer than he was when she first met him last night.

“I’ll look for it online,” she says when they get inside her apartment. “Go look through the kitchen for anything you want to snack on. There’s drinks in the fridge, too.” Peter nods and wanders from the living room.

A minute later, the apartment is shaking from a deep bass.

“Sorry!” Peter shouts, and immediately the noise is dialed back. He comes bounding into the room, rubbing his ears roughly. “I’m so sorry. Really. I just—I saw your speaker and wanted to play this song for you.”

“Oh. No worries. I like this one.” She smiles softly.

Peter lights up. “Yeah?” He starts to kind of dance a little, but it’s a lot of elbows and hips. Michelle laughs louder than she expects to.

“You’re not very good at this,” she says through a wider grin, admiring as he accompanies the rap verse.

“Then come help,” he responds in the instrumental, motioning her over. She pushes herself off of the back side of the sofa, moving slowly, but with Peter’s increasingly vocal enthusiasm and championship, she laughs out a little more and absorbs more of the rhythm.

A song later, when Peter nearly trips, he catches himself with one arm on the table behind Michelle. He’s a little shocked, breathing warm air on the lower half of her neck.

She can sidestep and move away from him easily, she knows. But the song leaves her throat. And she doesn’t really want to move. He’s…invitingly close.

Michelle notices as Peter’s eyes flick down to her lips and she wonders what exactly he’s thinking. Before she can ask, however, he stands back up again.

“Sorry,” he says, backing up a step, “I-I didn’t mean to infringe on your space. Not a very good dancer.”

In a flash of boldness, Michelle reaches out for Peter’s hand, drawing him back. The music continues on, but neither of them say anything; instead, with her eyes wide and searching, Michelle stutters her head forward. Peter swallows hard, letting her move his hand to her waist.

And then she goes for it—a light flutter of a kiss. When she pulls back momentarily, he leans instead, until they’re pressed against the low back of Michelle’s old sofa. Peter realizes he’s too unaware of his surroundings too late, sending them both tumbling over onto the cushions in a tangle of limbs and surprised yelps. He catches them both, however, wrapping his arm over Michelle just as she starts to roll off and onto the floor and resetting her. She supports herself over him with one arm, her necklace swinging up towards his face.

They catch their breath and laugh stupidly.

“That was smooth,” Michelle finally says, sitting up a little, “especially for a guy with two left feet.”

“What can I say?” he responds slyly, smiling goofily. “I’m a protector of the city.” She hums, finding herself slumping back down onto him.

“Alright, Daredevil.” Some moments pass, and Peter adjusts himself so they’re a little more comfortable. _Her hair is so nice_ , he thinks as he twists a strand between his fingertips. _This is nice._

Michelle reaches over to turn the music down from Peter’s phone and play the movie he’d wanted to watch from her laptop. She doesn’t pay as much attention to it as she wanted to, not with her heart excitedly jumping all over the place.

Peter can hear the way it thrums against her ribcage, and he hopes it’s for him. His own is settling down. This is the most at-ease he’s felt in a long, long time. Michelle feels like…home. Like Ned. Like Morgan and Pepper. Like May. He doesn’t miss the way she just seems to fit, or the way they just click. The indescribable way she already seems to _get_ him.

His heart stops for a moment, overwhelmed with the thought of Tony Stark. He manages his breathing, sure, but that doesn’t stop the crash of longing.

Nothing will replace Mr. Stark, he knows—not in his heart, not in the hearts of billions, not in the superhero-sized hole he’s left in the Avengers and in the universe. Peter knows he’s not the next Iron Man. He can’t be the post-war Tony Stark for the rest of the world, not in the way they’d want him to be.

But here with Michelle, here with this girl he really barely knows and yet feels entirely entwined with, he remembers some of the support he’d once had. The camaraderie. The mutual fire.

He’s scared of how much he cares for her already—it’s dangerous for the both of them. Still, he wants to try. She reminds him what he fights for.

Peter breathes out a sigh louder than he’d intended.

“What’re you thinking about?” she mumbles against his hip. He twirls her hair for another beat, leaning back into the couch pillows. His shoulders relax and his heart slows.

“Oh, nothing important.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know your thoughts please!! you can send me prompts on tumblr @ironspyderr too

**Author's Note:**

> please yell at me in the comments or at tumblr @ironspyderr  
> if you are looking for a prompt fulfillment, I'm happy to take requests :)
> 
> fic inspired by The Chainsmokers' song "Push My Luck."


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